Buses targeted by drive-by shooter

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Two Dunedin buses were shot at by an alleged drive-by shooter with an air rifle yesterday while working the same suburban route.

Dunedin Ritchies Transport Dunedin-based manager Malcolm Budd said he was shocked when a shaken driver phoned him to report the first of two shootings targeting the company’s buses on the Anderson's Bay run.

“Yesterday the driver rings me up and says, `I’ve just had the window shot out of my bus’. He said [the shooter] was in a white Mazda Familia hatchback.”

“By the time I got there a second bus [on the same route] had been shot up.”

Air rifle pellets had shattered bus windows in the section of the bus where parents keep their babies in prams, just behind the driver’s seat.

“We’re just lucky there were no injuries to passengers and drivers,” Budd said.

Police had arrested a 21 year-old man who will appear in the Dunedin District Court next week on firearms and other charges, Budd said.

The incident represented an apparent scaling-up of a series of unprovoked attacks on buses with paintball guns since the beginning of August in the same area, Budd said.

But yesterday’s alleged air rifle shootings were a more serious business, he said.